In the aftermath of a multiple-victim shooting, there often sounds a call to take up arms. Well, perhaps it’s more of a call to take away arms. Whenever the media sensationalizes these tragedies, the phrase “common-sense gun control” is tossed around to marginalize dissenters as no more than heartless fanatics. But what does it really mean? Politicians usually use it to allude to the now-defunct Federal Assault Weapons Ban, passed in 1994 and ended in 2004. At face value, this law certainly sounds like a reasonable restriction any civilized nation should have — and I would bet the vast majority of students at Brown would support measures like the AWB. Still, I would also wager that most are not nearly educated enough about firearms and firearms law to have an informed opinion.
It’s a rhetorical question oft posed by the media: “Why were James Holmes and Adam Lanza able to possess weapons designed for the military?” To understand the issue, we need first to understand contemporary firearms technology. In 1885, Ferdinand Mannlicher invented the first semi-automatic firing mechanism in which the firing of one bullet loaded the next and prepared the gun to fire again. Thus, one bullet was discharged each time the trigger was pulled, and this limiting factor determined the rate of fire. In contrast, fully automatic weapons fire rapidly as long as the trigger is depressed. Fully automatic weapons include guns such as the M16 — the staple rifle of the modern American military.
So did Holmes and Lanza use fully automatic weapons to commit their atrocities? Well, no. Since the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act was instated, only government agencies have been allowed to purchase such firearms. Instead, both shooters used AR-15s, which are designated as military-style semi-automatics. These are semi-automatic weapons, but they have outside casings similar to those of fully automatic weapons used by military organizations. Although the outside of military-style semi-automatics might be “designed for military use,” the inside mechanism of the gun is essentially identical to that of nearly every hunting rifle and handgun produced since the late 1800s.
So if fully automatic weapons were outlawed already, what did the AWB regulate? It actually banned only the manufacturing of semi-automatics with specific cosmetic characteristics, such as certain grips or the presence of a bayonet mount. There exists no difference between the potency of an “assault weapon” and the old hunting rifle in your uncle’s closet — his rifle probably even fires larger-caliber bullets. But the media has quite the penchant for perpetuating this phobia of guns. They point at the intimidating military-style semi-automatics and ask, “How is it acceptable that he could legally have access to such weapons?” Consider how much less dramatic it would be if they were referring to a hunting rifle.
Emotions neither substitute nor serve as justification for rational beliefs, which can only be garnered through empirical facts. Given that the AWB did not regulate firearms categorically by any meaningful criteria, we would not expect it to have had any effect on crime rates. Unsurprisingly, the Department of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that it did not — and would not, were it reinstated.
While the reenactment of the AWB is illogical from both a theoretical and experimental perspective, we could reasonably consider alternative firearms legislation based upon more consequential attributes. Intuitively, we might ban guns with larger clips, effectively limiting rate of fire. Yet, as any gun enthusiast will know, external clip-loaded firearms — including nearly all semi-automatics — are compatible with magazines of arbitrarily large size, so this is not a discriminating feature.
I personally support the idea of stronger background checks and the closing of the gun-show loophole — which allows guns to be purchased without any checks — but it seems unlikely these changes will have noticeable effects, as most guns used to perpetrate crime are obtained illegally. Any real evolution in firearms legislation will be necessarily drastic. Certainly, the outright prohibition of semi-automatics should be contemplated, but this would represent a radical increase in gun control, banning over 85 percent of all guns. This could hardly be described as “common-sense” legislation with which every sensible individual would agree, particularly the 47 percent of Americans who own guns legally. Without delving into the constitutional and empirical arguments, I assert that such an extreme revamping of gun law would be both infeasible and inefficacious.
This December, a Texas-based research group used a 3-D printer to fabricate a semi-automatic rifle that successfully fired six rounds before breaking. It seems inevitable the technology will soon advance to the point that it will be impossible to legislate any enforceable regulation. Many Brown students know first hand the futility of the war on drugs. Now, imagine if dealers could print marijuana.
Andrew Powers ’15 can be reached at andrew_powers@brown.edu.
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